Kids learn computer programming at Hack the Future

San Jose Hacking event an introduction to programming

Betsy Williams helps Hanyah Zachnah as she learns to hack a game of chess at the "Hack the Future" event at the Tech Museum in San Jose Calif., on August 20, 2011.

Betsy Williams helps Hanyah Zachnah as she learns to hack a game of chess at the "Hack the Future" event at the Tech Museum in San Jose Calif., on August 20, 2011.

Photo: Audrey Whitmeyer-Weathers, The Chronicle

Photo: Audrey Whitmeyer-Weathers, The Chronicle

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Betsy Williams helps Hanyah Zachnah as she learns to hack a game of chess at the "Hack the Future" event at the Tech Museum in San Jose Calif., on August 20, 2011.

Betsy Williams helps Hanyah Zachnah as she learns to hack a game of chess at the "Hack the Future" event at the Tech Museum in San Jose Calif., on August 20, 2011.

Photo: Audrey Whitmeyer-Weathers, The Chronicle

Kids learn computer programming at Hack the Future

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Dozens of school-age kids gathered at the Tech Museum in downtown San Jose on Saturday for a day of hacking. Armed with laptop computers, the youngsters hunkered down around tables, and in bean-bag chairs on the floor, to learn from a team of veteran hackers, most of them young engineers at Silicon Valley startups.

No, they weren't learning how to break into BART's train control system, play war games on the Pentagon computers or steal credit card numbers. Hack the Future is an effort to extend the techie tradition of hacking - programmers getting together to create code, share ideas and learn from each other. It's about creating and innovating, said Joe Mathes, one of the organizers of Hack the Future, who works at tech startup Sauce Labs.

"I like to think of it as two words - the scary one with people breaking into computers, that's not us," he said. "The other one is about building creative things."

Ryan Mitra, 12, of Palo Alto attended the first youth hackfest in May and has already become a veteran at explaining the difference between the two types of hacking.

About 75 kids, in fifth through 12th grades, attended the daylong event, with about 25 tech-industry workers serving as mentors. While hackathons are typically free-form events with few rules and not much structure, this event had a little of both. At different stations, kids were encouraged to work on their own, but were able get advice or lessons when needed. They could learn how to control a robot, create their own video games or how to solder from Al Alcorn, creator of the classic Pong and regarded as the father of video gaming.

"This whole thing is inspired by a lot of young engineers wanting to share their knowledge," said Alcorn. "I'm their resident celebrity."

Among the many activities, young hackers could design their own versions of Pong, then challenge Alcorn to a game. At a chess station, kids were invited to view the source code - the programming - for a game, then change it to make the game more interesting. One boy tapped a few keys, changed all of his chess pieces to queens, then quickly won the game.

Alex Peake, the founder and CEO of gaming startup Primer Labs, had a crowd of young students eager to learn how to create their own video games.

"The reason to teach people to make video games is that everyone loves video games. Well, 97 percent of people love video games," he said. "Video gaming is the entry point into computer science, and computer science is the entry point to all science. It starts kids on the path of science, technology, math, the whole thing. It becomes cool."

Back in the corner, kids reclining on bean-bag chairs tapped away on laptops and learned to control a 5-foot-tall robot from Willow Garage, a startup that develops personal robotics software.

Akul Gupta, 11, of Cupertino created code that told the robot to raise both hands, lower the one that's touched, then raise the opposite hand high in the air and exchange a high five.

"I do programming at home," he said, "but I never got to interact with a robot at home."

Mukta Goel, his mother, described her son as "a big nerd - he likes to build things on his own." She said the event was an ideal way for kids to learn.

"They're not forced to come here," she said. "They like to come here and learn to do things from each other."

Ashna Avachat, 11, of Pleasanton learned how to build an Android application and was designing a fashion website with her 12-year-old friend, Riti Sachdeval of San Ramon.

"It's not like a classroom," she said. "You can walk around and talk to people about different things, learn things, mostly individually."

That's what Mathes likes to hear.

"Hack the Future has a double meaning," he said. "Kids are going to be the hackers of the future, but we are also hacking the future by making kids who are going to shape the future."